Winter’s Bone

OPENING: 07/11/2010

STUDIO: Anonymous Content

RUN TIME: 100 min

ACCOMPLICES:
Trailer, Official Site

The Charge
Bred and buttered.

Opening Statement
Winter’s Bone is a chilling tale set in rural Missouri which couldn’t have been cast any better. Jennifer Lawrence brilliantly leads the ensemble as a seventeen year old looking for her miscreant father in a small community of people, many of which are blood related. With a budget of only $2 million dollars, director Debra Granik has assembled a film more powerful than anything I have seen this year.

Facts of the Case
Seventeen year old Ree Dolly cares for her little brother, sister and emotionally ill mother in their rural Missouri home. The sheriff comes by the house looking for the father, who is due in court within days, but has since disappeared from town. A bail bondsman comes by the house to let the family know that their deadbeat dad has put the house up as part of the bond and if he doesn’t show in court, they will be soon become homeless. Ree begins her search for her father in the obvious places, but soon realizes that to get the information she needs, she will need to talk to the shady people with whom he has had dealings. In this part of the Ozarks, almost everyone is related, but few are willing to help.

The Evidence
It is strange how the films that I look forward to the most often disappoint, like when Indiana Jones was running from the spaceship or when Batman had a case of laryngitis that wouldn’t go away. In both of these instances, I knew something was terribly wrong. In recent years, the films that leave the most lasting impressions are the ones out of left field. In 2007, it was No Country For Old Men and in 2008, it was Let The Right One In. In 2009, that film was Drag Me To Hell, and this year the film that has blown me away is Winter’s Bone. After a string of mediocre films, I am once again reminded of why I love going to the movies.

I know different types of films appeal to different types of people, but I seem to have an affinity for either cold, depressing dramas or psychological horror films. Winter’s Bone falls into the former category, but has several scenes that will get under your skin without question. In the same way as John Boorman’s Deliverance, we meet the type of mountain people that those who read online film reviews should never meet in a dark alley—or anywhere for that matter. Ree’s family is poor, squirrel-eatin’ poor to be exact, but Ree does her best to bring up her little brother and sister responsibly. She teaches them to cook for themselves and quizzes them on various math and spelling words. Ree has to fend for herself since her mother is depressed and hasn’t said a word in years. While Ree and her siblings are kind-hearted individuals, her kinfolk are indeed a scary bunch, the kind of people who keep several tireless cars on the lawn and a pet ferret in the corner of the living room. (No offense to our lesser distinguished readers of Cinema Verdict who might own a ferret or two. I hear those footlong rats taste wonderful.)

Jennifer Lawrence plays Ree, the teenager searching for her missing father who is also one of the many local manufacturers of crystal meth. To keep the house, Ree must track down her father and make sure he gets back to court in time. She starts by talking to her uncle Teardrop (John Hawkes), the first of many men with whom direct eye contact is not recommended. When we first meet Teardrop, he is nonchalantly loading his pistol at the kitchen table we can sense instantly that this is a tightly wound individual. Teardrop sports a small tattooed cross under his left eye and repeatedly pulls a bag of cocaine from his pocket for a quickie. John Hawkes is just one of the outstanding performers in the film, and Teardrop is the kind of guy who can become completely unhinged at any moment. Ree knows that too, probably from past experience, and Lawrence exhibits that fear to a T.

Aside from a “doobie for your walk home”, Ree gets little to no help from Teardrop. She then seeks help from Little Arthur, another crank dealer in the area. With no support from him, she moves on to Thump Milton, a distant relative who runs the town and won’t speak a word about the information he clearly knows. All of the people she deals with along the way feel unbelievably real, and moreso, look like true hill folk. Everyone in the film is dirty and has a dishevelled look about them. Merab, daughter of Thump, is played by Dale Dickey and looks every bit the part of a mountain woman who has felt the effects of a very hard life, possibly one with frequent meth use. Dickey is frightening and a pivotal scene involving Merab near the end of the film is bone chilling.

Winter’s Bone is a film about blood ties and how much those really mean. Will feuding families of the same bloodline willingly watch a seventeen year old and family lose the house because of the iniquities of her father? In the end, it is a question of which people are truly heartless and at what cost. Debra Granik has done a masterful job at exploring this subject in a rural part of Missouri most of us will thankfully never see. Granik’s effective use of gray and blue tones perfectly bring out the nature of both the bleak, winter setting, but also the coldness of the story’s characters. This is a film that you won’t forget for some time and although it won’t have the mass appeal of Inception, it has far more complex characters and believable situations…if you are into that sort of thing.

Closing Statement
Winter’s Bone is an unforgettable film and ranks up with Deliverance in the creepy-hillbilly genre. The gritty acting combined with great dialogue make for one of the most realistic dramas I have seen in years. We see characters in various levels of depravity and get a view of an inpoverished world completely foreign to most of us.

The Verdict
10/10

Inception

OPENING: 07/16/2010

STUDIO: Warner Bros.

RUN TIME: 148 min

ACCOMPLICES:
Trailer, Official Site

The Charge
Your Mind is the Scene of the Crime

Opening Statement
After achieving remarkable success both critically and financially with The Dark Knight, Director Christopher Nolan has taken a break from Batman to pursue his own original idea: Inception, based on a script that Nolan developed for over a decade. The result is a film that sees Nolan reaching dizzying heights as an artist; an intelligent, original serving of thunderous elegance that towers over the rest of the summer movie crop like a giant in Lilluput.

Facts of the Case
In order to accept the film, you must accept its basic conceit: that advanced technology has been developed which allows people to share dream experiences together. Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio, The Departed) is a man who has used this technology for selfish means, as he’s a specialist in entering the dreams of others and extracting valuable secrets from them. This is a complex and challenging art that requires significant planning and assistance.

However, Dom’s newest client (Ken Watanabe, The Last Samurai) isn’t interested in the extraction of ideas. He wants to know if inception (the planting of an idea into another person’s mind through dreams) is possible. Dom insists that such a thing would be very difficult, but that it could be done. Without further ado, he hires a team of experts (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Dileep Rao and Tom Hardy) in various aspects of dream invasion to assist him in the mission. Their target is the son (Cillian Murphy, Batman Begins) of a dying CEO, and they must convince him to make a particular decision upon his father’s death.

The Evidence
There are a lot of additional nuances to that plot that I haven’t really gotten into, but that’s because it would take an inordinate amount of time to explain the many complications at work in the essentially simple framework of this story. In fact, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen another movie that had to devote the vast majority of its running time to explaining itself. Inception is not about what happens but how it happens, and Nolan essentially uses the film as a canvas for unraveling his meticulously constructed ideas. If that sounds dull, be assured that nothing could be further from the truth. Inception is thrilling both intellectually and otherwise, with layers of intelligent excitement poured on top of a moving emotional foundation.

Nolan is a filmmaker who pays close attention to detail and takes great care in the construction of his films. As such, his dreamscapes are not free-flowing fantasy worlds full of random whimsy but rather specifically-organized layouts with precise rules and regulations that govern them. There are some who might suggest that dreams deserve to be treated as something more unpredictable and unruly, but I found Nolan’s carefully organized menace nothing short of fascinating. By giving dreams a set of complex ground rules, Nolan creates a very stable foundation on which to build his wild architecture. To witness the unbending logic which is dictating the frenzied action as the film barrels into its third act is unbelievably satisfying and exciting.

Inception is bursting at the seams with ideas, one of which is that it is possible to have dreams within dreams… and dreams within dreams within dreams, too. However, there is a difference in the perception of time from level to level. When you’re dreaming, time moves slower than it would in real life. Time moves even slower in the level below that, and so on. So, what feels like 10 seconds on the first level of dreaming feels like an hour on the third level. This idea fuels a magnificent sequence in which various members of the team are carrying out different tasks on each of the levels, synchronizing their efforts through the use of an Edith Piaf song set to go off at a specific point. This could have been a mess, but Nolan and editor Lee Smith (this year’s Oscar winner, I think) present the whole affair with an almost musical pacing and unwavering clarity (the actual music helps too, as Hans Zimmer turns in an effectively stormy score).

The emotional core of the film is largely found in the performance of Leonardo DiCaprio, who turns in a performance eerily similar to his work in Shutter Island. Without wanting to spoil either film, let it be said that both films feature remarkable similarities both in terms of the subject matter and in the back stories of the lead characters. DiCaprio is every bit as good here as he was in Scorsese’s film, proving once again just how much he has grown as an actor. He’s ably supported by a game supporting cast, with Ellen Page standing out as a young woman who persists in attempting to understand what secrets Dom Cobb has buried away. Marion Cotillard (Public Enemies) also pulls off a tricky performance as Cobb’s wife, who quite literally haunts his dreams on a regular basis. Everyone does good work and most of the significant characters are given a chance to shine at some point (though Michael Caine has roughly two minutes of screen time), but most of the major requirements in terms of acting are on DiCaprio’s shoulders. Fortunately, he’s now fully capable of carrying that weight.

Closing Statement
If I have one concern/complaint with the film, it’s that Inception is so wrapped up in its ideas that it doesn’t really take enough time to ponder the ethics of those ideas. What Dom Cobb and his gang are engaged in is essentially a form of mental rape. This activity deserves some serious discussion and debate, but that’s brushed off pretty quickly (Nolan is more concerned about the effects these activities have on the perpetrators than the victims). Of course any half-perceptive viewer will recognize these things on their own, but I can’t help but wish a stronger opposing point-of-view had been represented in the film.

Even so, that’s a small complaint about a film that I could continue praising for quite some time. Instead, I’ll simply tell you that Inception is an absorbing ride from it’s unusual opening scene to its masterful closing shot (a final image rivaled only this year by the closing frames of The Ghost Writer), and that it’s one of the year’s best films. See it without hesitation.

The Verdict

10/10

Solitary Man

OPENING: 06/02/2010

STUDIO: Anchor Bay Films

RUN TIME: 90m

ACCOMPLICES:

Trailer, IMDb

The Charge
Ben Loves His Family Almost as Much as He Loves Himself

Opening Statement
Solitary Man is the story of Ben Kalman, a character that Michael Douglas plays almost by second nature. Douglas shines in the role and his performance makes the film worth seeing, even if it is stronger than the film itself.

Facts of the Case
After bad word from the doctor six years ago, Ben Kalman has since refused to come to terms with his age and place in life. Illegal business practices with his car dealership almost cost him jail time and he spends his remaining days making one poor decision after another. He chases after girls a fraction his age and is nothing but a strain on the genuine relationships he does have. Ben lives for himself, but now he must take his girlfriend’s daughter to a college interview, where his tainted reputation and selfish lifestyle get the better of him.

The Evidence
Michael Douglas hasn’t starred in a blockbuster for some time, so to the American public, he has somewhat fallen off the radar as a mainstream actor. With Solitary Man, not only do we find Douglas in a leading role once again, but we find him in a role tailor made for him, as he excels at playing egotistical pricks. While Gordo Gecko may have had a level of charisma that had us almost believing in such a corrupt individual, Ben Kalman is a cheater and a liar, leaving little to admire. The worst part is that he knows it. Ben prides himself as a “man who takes risks,” but often the risks are either illegal or lack any discretion whatsoever.

The film’s credits appropriately open with Johnny Cash’s Solitary Man as we find Ben Kalman wearing all black and walking around the streets of New York. This is more fitting than we even realize, because the more we learn about Ben, the more we can see that he is lonely, desparate, and completely unhappy with his own life. Aptly set in New York City, we find a man who is so self centered that the rest of the world is merely a blur. Ben was once highly successful and graced the cover of Forbes magazine before his shady dealings cost him virtually everything he had. Although he has paid his debt to society, his unscrupulous nature and detached personality is ever so present. This is a bitter disappointment to his grandson, but moreso to his daughter Susan (Jenna Fischer), who must repeatedly write his rent checks since Ben can’t get back on his own feet.

We spend a little time getting to know Ben, and learn that he hates it when his daughter calls him “dad” and especially loathes being called “grandpa”. Ben won’t accept that he is sixty years old and when the film takes us to the meat of the story, where he takes his girlfriend’s daughter Allyson (Imogen Poots) to a college interview, we already know that the college setting will be ripe with temptation. Since Ben himself is completely immature, he has no problem fitting in around campus and he quickly befriends a student named Daniel (Jesse Eisenberg), who reminds Ben of his younger self when he attended the same school. Ben tirelessly spouts advice to Daniel, who looks up to Ben, but the advice ultimately comes from a source with a crumbling foundation.

Douglas is utterly convincing as a man who struggles with great regret, but with too much pride to admit it. During one scene on campus, Ben stops briefly to sit on a park bench, a bench that clearly has many memories attached. Ben gets up and shrugs off the overwhelming feelings attached to that location as if he can’t face where he is at in life today. Only later in the film does Ben swallow his pride enough to ask for help from his old friend Jimmy (Danny DeVito), owner of a local food joint near the school. Jimmy is one of the many voices of reason in Ben’s life, but Ben can’t see past the lack of financial success in Jimmy’s life.

Solitary Man is a well constructed and well acted film, but isn’t as satisfying as I would have liked. There is nothing particularly engaging about the story and as great as Douglas’ performance was, the movie feels like a slow burning fuse on a stick of dynamite, without the bang. Not to any fault of Douglas, the main character lacked the arc needed to make the story worth telling. The character of Ben isn’t extremely likable, so as an audience member, it would have helped to have seen some sort of character progression (or regression). With Wall Street, which was far superior, the film climaxed with Gordon Gecko’s empire falling before his eyes. With Solitary Man, the Ben we see at the beginning of the film isn’t far from who we see at the end, and unfortunately he has hurt many others along the way.

Closing Statement
Solitary Man is a worthwhile watch simply for Michael Douglas’ performance, which is better than the film itself. I enjoyed watching Douglas act like a self-centered jerk, but only up to the point at which I realized the film wasn’t going to progress.

The Verdict

6/10

Brothers (2009)

OPENING: 12/04/2009

STUDIO: Lionsgate

RUN TIME: 110 Minutes

ACCOMPLICES:
Trailer, Official Site

The Charge
There are two sides to every family.

Opening Statement
Doesn’t Hollywood have anything better to do than remaking international hits for the American audience? Evidently not, as Jim Sheridan’s Brothers seeks to translate the original 2004 Danish film for people who don’t like to read subtitles. Sheridan remains faithful to his source, resulting in a moving melodrama with outstanding performances compensating for a general air of impatience. Needless or not, Brothers is a modestly rewarding remake, one which only occasionally surrenders to manipulate button-pushing.

Facts Of The Case
Marine Capt. Sam Cahill (Tobey Maguire, Spider-Man) receives word he must go to Afghanistan just as his ne’er-do-well younger brother Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal, Zodiac) is released from prison. At first, the presence of Tommy is intimidating due to his penchant for booze and history for physical violence. When Sam goes missing and is declared dead, however, Tommy proceeds to help his grieving sister-in-law Grace (Natalie Portman, The Other Boleyn Girl). While performing odd-jobs around the house, he ingratiates himself with Grace’s two young daughters, Isabelle and Maggie. He also gets close with Grace right when word comes of Sam’s survival in a Taliban prison camp.

The Evidence
The original 2004 Danish film Brodre, directed by Susanne Bier and starring Connie Nielson (Gladiator), is an exceptional drama. Bolstering a tightly written, emotionally gripping story and devastating performances by the three leads, Bier’s film is highly recommended. For better or worse, Sheridan’s film will hopefully garner the original more attention now than it did when it first came out. The 2009 version isn’t quite a carbon copy, as screenwriter David Bienoff (The 25th Hour) makes several subtle—and acceptable—changes to the original narrative, all of which shouldn’t vex purists.

Part of the reason Brothers works so well is because of the director. Sheridan is no stranger to provocative family dramas, helming critical faves In The Name Of The Father and In America. His last effort, Get Rich Or Die Tryin’ starring rapper 50 Cent, was such an ugly exercise in narcissism that one wonders what he was thinking when he stopped making dramas in his native Ireland. Brothers isn’t a return to form, nor is it a step backward. Sheridan handles the material well and gets maximum support from his well-chosen cast. His direction is smooth and matter-of-fact, slowly burning to climactic combustion.

Some have lambasted the histrionic approach by Maguire, but I thought he was thoroughly impressive. He offers a mature performance which gets more frightening as time goes on. It’s been a while since we’ve seen Maguire in a non-Spidey role, and he proves once again how underrated of an actor he is. Strongly matching him is Gyllenhaal, as the screw-up brother who begins to embrace his brother’s family for the first time in his life. As for Portman, while she isn’t near as effective as Connie Nielson, she manages to generate not only sympathy but also much-needed warmth. Also offering fine support are Sam Shepherd (Black Hawk Down) and Mare Winningham (Swing Vote) as the elder Cahills.

Several critics, including Richard Roeper, have already called Brothers as one of the year’s best, but I beg to disagree. The film is effective, but it surely isn’t flawless. While Bienoff adequately transfers the themes of the original, his impatience is a major debit. Many points in Act II feel rushed, with the jumping back-and-forth between home and Afghanistan particularly jarring. Beinoff knows when urgency is needed, but he doesn’t give the bonding scenes between Gyllenhaal and Portman enough time to breathe. The raw, honest edge of the original (which was shot on digital video), is somewhat lost in this polished treatment.

Closing Statement
In the end, there’s certainly much to admire about Brothers; if only it didn’t remind one of how much superior the original was.

The Verdict
7/10

Attention loyal readers: did you miss our review of Up In The Air from our Toronto International Film Festival coverage in September? If so, you’ve come to the right place then. The latest film from Jason Reitman (Juno, Thank You For Smoking) this one has already begun racking up the accolades and awards — some even place it (controversially one might argue!) as the Best Film of the Year.

Head on over and read our review to decide for yourself!

Up in the Air

OPENING: 11/13/2009

STUDIO: Paramount

ACCOMPLICES:
Trailer, Official Site

The Charge
The story of a man ready to make a connection.

Opening Statement
The third film by filmmaker Jason Reitman (son of Ivan, Juno, Thank You For Smoking) Up in the Air establishes itself quickly as his best film to-date; very impressive, considering how strong his oeuvre is. The man has a knack for turning the simple into the profound, for releasing films timed so expertly with the mental climate of audiences. Up in the Air is a near-perfect balance of lighthearted comedy and bittersweet introspection, wrapped up into social and economical criticism, and received standing ovations during its screening at TIFF. This one is going to turn heads in November.

Facts of the Case
Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) is a “career transition consultant” – he fires people for a living. He lives his whole life out of his suitcase. He travels almost every day of the year. He spends more time in first class on airplanes than in his real apartment which he despises. For him, his home is on the road, in the endless suites of hotel rooms, in concierge lines being catered to. His company gets hired to go on-site and lay off dozens of employees at one time, listening to their moans, their threats, their tears with faux-sympathy and support. In an economic climate sliding further into the tubes, business is booming for Ryan.

He even meets like-minded travelers on the road, like the beautiful Alex (Vera Farmiga), who lives a life as perpetually on-the-move as Ryan. They try and coordinate their schedules to meet up whenever their paths cross for a late-night rendezvous, and Ryan enjoys the casualness of it all, of his entire life. Ryan is happy. All his emotional baggage has been stowed safely away. For him, total mastery of the business class lifestyle is his reason for living—and one day, he’ll even reap the exclusive rewards of logging over ten million miles as a frequent flyer, his scorecard to success.

But when his corporation hires a young hotshot graduate named Natalie (Anna Kendrick) who threatens to “revolutionize” the business by laying off employees via webcam, Ryan takes her on as an unwilling protégé to show her exactly how the job really works—the endless traveling, the tears of dejected and devastated workers losing their entire place in the world. By showing her exactly how isolated and mobile his life needs to be to succeed at his job, and by juggling increasingly romantic rendezvous with Alex, he veers dangerously close to developing real relationships for the first time. Suddenly, the ties that bind everyone else that seemed so onerous—mortgages, families, spouses, children—now act as spotlights, illuminating exactly how isolated he really is.

The Evidence
A marvelously enjoyable film, Up in the Air is a perfect example of how profound and powerful a filmmaker can be when he simply stops and listens to his audience. Here is a film that captures so perfectly so many anxieties, worries, delights and joys in modern America—a struggling economic climate, the constant anxiety of losing jobs and livelihoods, loneliness and alienation, the new emphasis to put career first and family second—all of it wrapped so effortlessly and enjoyably.

In Ryan, we find a man who struggles with his lot in life, not as a “mid-life crisis” so much as a culture crisis. Imagine his representation as an entire generation of American salarymen, eschewing family life and connections, binding ties and baggage in favor of a highly mobile and materialistic lifestyle. For Ryan (and for so many of us today) career comes first, at the exclusion of every other element traditionally embraced by our culture. Traditionally, one worked hard for their house, their family, their children, but for millions like Ryan, today, the work itself is the reward. All the other bits just weigh you down. Consider that for many of us up-and-coming children of Generation X, we are at an age still struggling with financial obligations, debts, immaturity and finding a career path that can support our dreams and aspirations. Flash back thirty years, and by our age, our parents had it all: a house, a career, a family and children, with not a care in the world. It must have been nice.

Up in the Air gets it, absolutely nails this anxiety on the head. If we live a life entirely devoted to the materialistic, to the mobile and modern lifestyle, eschewing the traditional values—what do we have at the end of the day? Ryan is happy as a clam with his life, and his ethos acts as nails on a chalkboard to everyone around him. Estranged from his own family, they have no understanding or appreciation of why he puts distance between them. His young protégé looks at him as if he is from another plant when he sings the virtues of total freedom of bonds. And it works for him, perfectly, brilliantly—right up until the point where it stops working. We watch it happen in a sequence of facial expressions on George Clooney, like bricks slowly tumbling out of a decrepit wall causing the entire thing to collapse. It is a heartbreaking moment.

A brilliant mix of comedy and drama, of loneliness and loss, heart and humility, Up in the Air feels so right, so profound, despite not really saying much of anything. Call it a populist film in subject and delivery; the film manages to speak at length on a variety of critical emotional, social and cultural issues, without really creating any debate on the issue. This is just a simple slice of one man’s life, and whatever we infer or take away from it is ours to decide. There is little challenge here. It is a gentle and kind film with its audiences, never too probing or solemn in its observations or critiques, but this casual approach works extremely well, in part because we can believe it. Ryan lives a lifestyle that most audience members would never choose to live, but in watching his own fiery pride flicker and burn out, his own ethos come heavily into question, we cherish and value our own relationships by proxy. His heartbreaks manifest as our own introspect.

Most films struggle trying to harmonize disparate elements, mixing and matching genres, but Jason Reitman appears to have quite the knack for it. As a writer, producer and director, he seemingly has an uncanny talent to attach to projects that span genres with ease. Up in the Air is equal parts social commentary, spiritual philosophy, romantic comedy and family drama. Like a Benetton commercial, all elements are in harmony. The jokes all land perfectly and are uproariously funny, the family elements are warm and approachable, the introspection never comes close to being preachy or manipulative, and the romance is tender and sincere. Adding to this, Reitman reveals himself as having some serious talent behind the camera. This is a beautifully shot film, full of quirky close-ups and exquisitely framed compositions sure to delight those who appreciate the finer technical elements of cinema.

Clooney delivers a wonderful performance as a man slowly coming into (or out of) his shell. The cool and calculated Ryan we meet at the beginning of the film peels away to reveal a man not unlike all of us—unsure of where his place in the world is, how he will pay the bills, lonely for affection but too proud to admit it. It is a marvelously nuanced performance by the veteran actor, and will no doubt earn him great praise. An unusually reserved Jason Bateman plays his boss, a corporate raider type satisfied with his lot and unsympathetic to his report’s plight. Vera Farmiga lights up the screen as the chromosomal counterpart to Clooney, a female Ryan with no hesitation or reservations. Watching the two fall into love is as satisfying of an experience as even the finest romances can offer. The hapless protégé, played by Anna Kendrick is plucky and spunky, full of big ideas and fresh out of school (as we all were once). By the end, she learns some unpleasantly hard lessons about how the world really works (as we all did). Her performance is quite good; funny and feisty and by the end, just a bit deflated, all very realistic. Small cameo appearances by Zach Galifianakis and the eponymous J.K. Simmons round out the cast nicely.

Closing Statement
Up in the Air captures almost every element about going to the movies that we love, balancing them equally and effortlessly into a single, simple film. Lighthearted but profound, heartwarming while distant, humorous and heartbreaking, you get the idea. The final product is a masterful contradiction, bittersweet and lovely and wholly enjoyable—absolutely one of the best movies of the year.

The Verdict
9/10

The Road

OPENING: 10/16/2009

STUDIO: The Weinstein Company

ACCOMPLICES:
Trailer, Official Site

The Charge
“We are not gonna quit. We are gonna survive this.”

Opening Statement
Based on the dystopic award-winning novel by esteemed American writer Cormac McCarthy, The Road is a faithfully bleak adaptation, offering compelling performances from its two leading actors. It never quite captures the full emotional bludgeoning of the literary experience, but has more than enough potency to knock audiences out in their seats. Bring tissues.

Facts of the Case
The world is dead, destroyed. All the plants and animals have died. The sky is gray, and grows more dark and cold with every passing day. A father and son slowly trek across the land. They push a shopping cart filled with what little posessions they have in the world: a few canned goods, a gun with two bullets, some torn blankets.

They are heading for the coast, because that is all they can do to survive. The landscape is torn, full of ruthless gangs and cannibals. They hide in ditches, shiver in forests and fight illness, scraping what little they can from the land as they travel. The boy (Kodi Smit-McPhee) has never known a normal life, and the man (Viggo Mortensen) struggles to forget his. Together, they are all they have in the whole world.

The Evidence
The Road is a film that starts bad and gets progressively worse, which in most situations would be harsh criticism. Here, it is by grim design. Set amidst a brutal post-apocalyptic backdrop, the emotional impact of The Road lies between the simple love of a father and his son, of the father trying to protect his boy and raise him right in a chaotic world. The novel is terse, blunt and uncompromising, full of agony and heartache, and the cinematic adaption follows suit. Translating a book to film is always tricky business, but The Road gets most of it right, adhering rigidly to the source material, even copying entire sequences verbatim from the novel. The end result is a composition of silence, of grimaces and groans, of endless walking through a perpetually gray landscape.

The Road sets its scenario in the most abjectly cruel environment possible, a devastated world with no plant or animal life. We assume nuclear fallout, but it is never directly referenced or explained, nor is it required to be. All that matters is the boy and his father, surviving. Roving gangs, cannibalism, starvation, desperation, isolation; none of it matters, because they are together. The pair are headed to the eastern coast, because they might find solace there. They have no way of knowing, but it is a goal, and they stick to it despite all odds. As long as they remain together, they will be okay, even though their gun only has two bullets in it—one for each of them, if it comes to that.

Mortensen and his young co-star, Kodi Smit-McPhee delivers intimate and impressive performances. Despite the sweeping destruction and devastation that surrounds them, one of them is always on-camera; they are the entire universe in the film, disheveled in filthy clothes and crouched together in the cold. As hunger sets in, they grow pallid and wraithlike, both actors obviously losing quite a bit of weight for the part. Some cameo appearances are interjected here and there, but these are superfluous: Guy Pierce and Robert Duvall make short appearances, and we see Charlize Theron in flashback as the mother and wife, but these are secondary to the plot at best. The film is an exercise in isolation between the man and the boy, and all other sequences are but brief respites.

For such a solemn film, The Road is surprisingly hard to articulate discussion on. It is a film that will either connect with audiences, or fail to entirely. Judge it on the merits of its surface, and critics may find it dull and abhorrent, unnecessarily plodding and uneventful, and endlessly drawn out. It is all of these things, but explaining why they work in the film’s favor is challenging. This is a desperate film, one that pleads with every fiber of its being for hope that never comes. There is no salvation, no happy ending, no resolution—the world is lost, dead, destroyed and mangled beyond recognition. There is only the man and the boy, and whatever semblance of a normal life they can scrape up. With a growing sense of desperation, the man tries vainly to harden the boy, to teach him about the world he must now live in. The boy struggles and digs his heels in, refusing to abide by his father’s proclamations, wanting to experience his life his own way, damning the consequences. It is all allegorical, of course; The Boy and The Man, with no given names should give testament to this fact. Perhaps those of us who struggled in their relationships with their fathers (or likewise, fathers with their sons) will find greater meaning in the tale.

And yet, something is amiss. The adaptation, while faithful, lacks the emotional resonance we expect from McCarthy’s brutal and uncompromising tale, rarely capturing the true emotional desperation of the novel. The Road is a very good movie; a sad and taxing movie that asks much of its audience to endure, but is naught but pale simulacra compared to the novel. The movie is emulation, not adaptation, and anyone who hasn’t read the novel owes it to themselves to seek it out and experience it first-hand. Certainly, there is enough potency in The Road to deliver success to the film with critics and fans alike, but one cannot help but hope for something extraordinary here, something transcendental. Maybe the Coen Brothers set unrealistic expectations in this area.

Director John Hillcoat (The Proposition) has crafted an impressive cinematic vision full of ash and burned forests, earthquakes and endless skies of gray. Ominous shooting locations and some CGI tweaks create a wholly believable and despondent world with two lone inhabitants, wandering endlessly, with nary a soul in sight, elegant in its austere and torched beauty. The film’s biggest misstep is the score, flowery and flowing, far too melodramatic and active for such a bleak production, always trying to eke out that extra tear with the crescendo of strings during the sad moments. It is pure sappy overkill.

Closing Statement
At the festival screening, actor Viggo Mortensen wryly stated to the audience that we should not view The Road as “heart-breaking”, but rather, a “heart-opening” film. There is wisdom in this statement, a strange ethereal beauty to be found in this road tale of despair and damnation; an idyllic American stubbornness to keep on pushing despite overwhelming odds, holding onto the ties that bind us at all costs.

Even though The Road fails to capture the full emotional spectrum of the novel, it ends up a moot point. The elements that it gets right—the celebration of the protective bond between father and son, the desire to protect one another against all odds in a world gone to hell—it gets perfectly, absolutely, brilliantly right.

Seriously, bring tissues.

The Verdict
8/10

Public Enemies

OPENING: 07/01/2009

STUDIO: Universal

ACCOMPLICES:
Trailer, Official Site

SOUNDTRACK:

The Charge
“We’re here for the bank’s money, not yours. Put it away.”

Opening Statement
An unapologetically stiff technical masterpiece of composition and historical accuracy, Public Enemies is a surprise right out of the gate. When one considers the subject matter of Prohibition era bank robbers, Tommy guns and notorious American outlaw John Dillinger, one expects a cinematic humdinger of an action film, full of testosterone and action machismo, dramatic conflict and proper romanticizing of Dillinger as a cultural icon. Surprisingly—or perhaps not at all—we get nothing of the sort. Public Enemies is a film scrubbed so thoroughly of emotion and resonance as to be downright alien. It has no interest in observing any of the action clichés of summer blockbuster films, despite being released in the prime of summer blockbuster season.

Still, what exactly should we have expected from director Michael Mann? Consider Heat, a film that (depending on whom you ask) is either the best action film ever made, or the most colossal of bores. I lean towards the former, and I certainly appreciate Public Enemies for its numerous merits, but I have a feeling this film will be somewhat polarizing with audiences this weekend—especially those looking for a high-octane summer blockbuster.

Facts Of The case
Notorious bank robber John Dillinger (Johnny Depp) has just sprung his gang members from an Indiana state prison. It is 1933, and the world is at his fingertips. Dillinger is a cocky-yet-reserved thief who takes what he wants without hesitation, robbing bank after bank in a crime spree across Chicago and the Midwest with his longtime partner John ‘Red’ Hamilton (Jason Clarke). Dillinger le lives for the moment, having no interest in thinking about retirement or the future, aside from his interest in Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard), a coat check girl whom he liberates and takes as his girl.

But things are changing in America. Young FBI director J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Crudup) is training a new generation of investigators in modern techniques to catch criminals and put forth legislation making certain crime fall under federal jurisdiction. Dillinger and his gang have always found safe haven with the National Crime Syndicate in Chicago, but the Syndicate begin to realize that harboring criminals-turned-celebrities like Dillinger might be more trouble than worth—especially as they find new ways to make money without robbery and violence. A hotshot agent named Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) is called in to hunt down Dillinger at all costs.

As the glory days of criminal sprees wind down, Dillinger is forced to make desperate alliances with unfamiliar and notorious gangsters to make money, including the violently unpredictable Baby Face Nelson (Stephen Graham) and Homer Van Meter (Stephen Dorff). Branded Public Enemy #1 and with his friends in jail or dead, Dillinger seems almost oblivious to the noose tightening around his neck…

The Evidence
Public Enemies feels less like a dramatic recreation of the last few years of John Dillinger’s life, and more like a psudo-documentary, as if crews with digital cameras were sent back in time to simply record what they saw of Dillinger’s life. The attention to detail and minutia is nothing short of obsessive. Rarely does a Hollywood blockbuster adhere to historical fact as authentically as Public Enemies does, opting too often to throw caution and reality to the wind in favor of dramatic filmmaking, or to a particularly daring action sequence, or a shuffling of events to suit narrative. Here, the exact opposite is true; the film shoots in documentary-style on location whenever possible in the actual venues and locations that John Dillinger was. The infamous shootout at the Little Bohemia Lodge in Manitowish Waters, Wisconsin was re-created exactly at the same location. Actual banks Dillinger robbed are used to re-create identical robberies, and he escapes out of actual jails he escaped from. Some liberties (as always) are taken in the script, especially in killing various and notorious gangsters in view of the camera, but these are minor historical adjustments at best. The costume designs, the vintage automobiles—every detail is immaculate and perfectly realized.

Flip the coin over, and one quickly realizes that such unflinching historical accuracy and realism elements create a film so absent of Hollywood narrative, clichés and expected plot development as to be uncomfortable, like a spacious room devoid of all furniture. John Dillinger robs some banks, and then he dies. There is no greater purpose, no meaning in the action, no driving motivation behind the events—he did these things, and so Public Enemies shows him doing them. There is no rationalization or judgment behind them, no understanding of the man or his pathos. Action sequences are confused, chaotic affairs full of disorganization, screams and confusion; realistic to be sure, but far from the carefully choreographed sequences audiences expect with heroes leaping over cars firing guns akimbo.

It is possible that we may never see a movie more unsuited to be released at the height of the summer blockbuster season than Public Enemies. This is not to suggest that it is a bad film; far from it. When taken at its own merits, Mann has created a fascinating and detailed cinematic experience, a period retelling of a tumultuous era in American history with fantastic performances from cast and crew alike. But as a summer blockbuster, Public Enemies is as disinterested and cold as Dillinger (the man) reveals himself to be. At the screening I attended, there were quite a number of scattered boos echoing through the theater as the credits rolled. I overheard one person lament that they didn’t “get it”. They ask, “so he robs banks, and then he dies, and that’s it?” Yes, that’s it. Think of Public Enemies not as an action film, but a biopic; an academic retelling of key historical events in the life of a bank robber. Why does he rob banks? Even Dillinger himself seems uninterested in exploring his own motivations. No back story is offered, no childhood memory to justify his action. He is a matter-of-fact fellow, and he robs banks in a matter-of-fact sort of way. Dillinger says of himself that he likes baseball, movies, good clothes and fast cars. What else you need to know?

As an actor, Depp cuts a remarkable Dillinger, his physical resemblance to the man notwithstanding. This is a controlled and reserved performance, as simple and unpretentious a role for Depp as we have seen from him in years. Likewise for Christian Bale, who leaves his gruff bravado at the door—a refreshing break from his recent emphysemic action films. Bale cuts a dapper and suave profile as Melvin Purvis, the man out to catch Dillinger. With little character development portrayed in the film, the two embody living caricatures of actual people, and do it professionally and efficiently. Purvis does what he does because it’s his job, nothing more. We are used to seeing our characters in this role suffering obsession and anger and frustration, but none of that here; another subversion of expectation. We expect Dillinger to be something of a narcissist, but not so; he is interested in his stature as a growing celebrity, but only as a curiosity, observing with pride, but without flare or fuss. He is cool and calm and in complete control, and only begins to lose his cool when his girlfriend gets pinched. Marion Cotillard plays Dillinger’s girl, Billie Frechette, and her contribution to the film is mostly auxiliary, possessing few memorable lines and little to do in the script beyond run around and look anxious, playing her established role in the history lesson.

Beyond the primary cast, Public Enemies is crammed with dozens of secondary characters, all of various levels of interest, relevance and influence in Dillinger’s life. His gang of fellow robbers includes brief but solid performances from Stephen Dorff and Jason Clarke, and we are introduced to Purvis’ character by way of his apprehension (murder, really) of Pretty Boy Floyd (a cameo appearance by Channing Tatum). Of particular note is the casting of Stephen Graham as Baby Face Nelson; a devilishly wicked bit of casting. Graham is unhinged and raucous as Nelson, but gets little screen time.

Michael Mann has proven himself to be a filmmaker of astonishing technical prowess and craft, meticulous in design, accuracy and execution time and again, and no one will fault Public Enemies for its stylish direction, gritty cinematography and ultra-realistic action sequences. The high-definition digital film (a look familiar to fans of Collateral) seems oddly out-of-pace in a period film so meticulous in its historic accuracy and detail, but actually lends itself surprisingly well once audiences adjust to the washed-out color palate and peculiar lighting. Night sequences are particularly effective, casting trench coat thugs in shadow and swirling grain. Fans of Mann’s action work in the past will know exactly what to expect here, especially during the gunfight sequences, where proper caliber rules are observed. Handguns make small popping sounds in comparison to the Tommy gun, which unlike its “rat-a-tat-tat” characterization in films of yesteryear, is actually a loud, frightening and percussive thing that goes “KABOOM KABOOM KABOOM” and makes big holes in people. For a film with a running time of over two hours, action sequences are relatively few, but they feel well-placed and astonishingly visceral. Bullets pound into trees, and on-screen characters wince visibly with the impact and vibration. It’s all about the little details.

Dillinger in American folk culture is something of an anti-establishment folk hero, a rebel at the height of the Great Depression and takes the American Dream into dangerous and dramatic new directions, taking what he wants from the wealthy and the corrupt. He represented reckless and romantic abandon, freedom from constraints and rules. In Public Enemies, Dillinger is just a guy with a day job robbing banks. He enjoys what he does, and dresses sharp, and makes no apologies for his action, but reality lacks the same flair and charisma that American audiences have come to expect from this particular subject after years of popular culture, serialization, gangster films and word-of-mouth exaggeration.

Public Enemies is a constant subversion of expectations, replacing machismo and bravado and action sensibilities with cold authenticity and historical detail. There is little in the way of wit or humor in the film, because Dillinger was not a particularly witty or humorous person. With so few liberties taken by the screenplay, Public Enemies is boxed in by its own desire for total historical accuracy. It is not Mann’s strongest film, but it offers up a unique and unexpectedly faithful take on the American gangster mythology. Depending on your sensibilities, you will either find it refreshing, or extremely boring.

Closing Statement
Public Enemies eschews being boxed into popcorn blockbuster categorizations, yet bizarrely released at the absolute apex of audience expectations for such a film. This may be the most surprising film released this entire summer, a devious joke played by Universal upon the movie going public at large in the first week of July at a time when “subtlety” is the name of a jive-talking robot in a Michael Bay film. Oh my.

An undeniably fascinating technical and meticulous composition of historical accuracy and period drama, Public Enemies is too low-key and subtle to be categorized with Mann’s best work to-date, but if one goes in with the right expectations, the film will deliver as only his films can. Still, I fear the majority of the moviegoing public might not get the memo in time, and mistake Public Enemies for a film it is not.

The Verdict
7/10

Pontypool

OPENING: 05/29/2009

STUDIO: IFC Films

ACCOMPLICES:
Trailer, Official Site

The Charge
Shut up or die.

Opening Statement
From straight out of left field comes the weird and wonderful Pontypool, an unexpected foray into horror filmmaking by venerable Canadian director Bruce McDonald (Hard Core Logo, Highway 61, The Tracey Fragments). A tense and quirky zombie thriller set in rural Ontario, I would be willing to wager you’ve never seen anything quite like this before. Unless you study linguistics and semiotics at a university level, that is.

Facts of the Case
After shock jock Grant Mazzy (Stephen McHattie, Shoot ‘Em Up, Justice League) gets unceremoniously booted from the big city airwaves, he finds himself working at CLSY radio in the small rural town of Pontypool. His new workspace is the basement of the small town’s only church. What begins as another boring day of school bus cancellations, obituaries and missing cat reports soon unfolds into a genuine on-air catastrophe.

Bizarre reports of violence, strange speech patterns and general pandemonium begin to reach the ears of producer Sydney Briar (Lisa Houle, Emily of New Moon) and tech Laurel Ann (Georgina Reilly, The Dark Room), but nothing shows up on the news wire. Unable to verify the authenticity of the information, CLSY continues on its morning routine, slowly becoming aware of the growing chaos outside their door. Even more inexplicable, the confusing, babbling townsfolk seem to be infecting each other with insanity through the English language itself! Do Grant and his crew stay indoors and hope for safe rescue? Or are they somehow contributing horribly to the downfall of Pontypool by staying on the air?

The Evidence
Bruce McDonald is a director of note in Canada, but has made little impact outside of the Great White North. That might change after the outrageous Pontypool, a horror film as intellectually clever as it is creepy. The film quantifies everything fantastic about independent filmmaking in Canada: relatively unknown actors, small sets, low budgets, quirky humor and ambitious ideas. And of course, the film ultimately never even gets distributed here at home—but that’s Canadian cinema for you. How fortuitous that after a strong showing in 2008 at the Toronto International Film Festival, IFC Films acquired rights to the film in North America, because Pontypool bears all the hallmarks of being the next great cult Canadian horror flick to invade America. With any luck, horror fans will be stacking this one up alongside successful expatriates like Ginger Snaps and Cube.

Adapted by author Tony Burgess from his original novel “Pontypool Changes Everything”, Pontypool is not your average horror film. There is little in the way of blood or violence, there are few special effects, nothing in the way of “boo” moments. The majority of the film takes place in a single room, the basement of a church / makeshift radio station, which creates ample amounts of dramatic tension by sheer isolation. As the DJ vainly tries to keep the show going, small snippets of terrifying information begin flooding into the station: eyewitness reports of mob attacks, confused and stuttering callers making no sense, unconfirmed reports of military forces surrounding and quarantining the town. For the three hapless protagonists stuck at the switchboard, they can’t confirm or deny the information, and can’t get up to go outside and look out the window, which may very well be the most honest and smartest-written horror film script ever put to paper. For once, the characters don’t go into the dark room, don’t go into the empty streets unarmed, don’t run up the staircase chased by the monster—they hide like big babies. I’ve waited so long for that kind of refreshing honesty in horror films, I almost wept out of gratefulness. Cut off from the outside world, the paranoia and dread creep in as the city grows eerily quiet, then alarmingly destructive. No doubt it was a budget choice to refrain from showing hordes of zombies sweeping through the streets, and in any other genre, that kind of cheap-out might not fly, but in the world of horror filmmaking? The only thing worse than seeing the horrible monster outside your door is not seeing the horrible monster outside your door, and being too terrified to open it. The audience never leaves the room; we stay right beside them every numbing second, piecing together the mystery in slow, agonizing steps.

As for the mystery itself, accepting for the moment that poor Pontypool is overrun by swarms of deranged and zombie-esque townsfolk looking to murder the embattled radio crew, the explanation as to why this is happening is the real fun in Pontypool. It is also the point at which audiences will seriously need to roll a saving throw against their own brain. The more details this review goes into as to the specifics about the nature of the “infection”, the less satisfying the film will feel, so forgive our intentional vagueness. Suffice it to say, no horror film has ever tried an explanation this cerebral before to explain zombie attacks. Clever eyes watching may note a well-worn paperback copy of Neal Stephenson’s seminal science-fiction novel “Snow Crash” sitting on a desk during one sequence in Pontypool. This is a deliciously wicked nod of the head to a literary classic that first introduced the ideas of semiotic-based diseases into the nerd collective. If you’ve read the book, you no doubt have a very good idea of what I speak of. For everyone else, it should be noted that the ideas put forth in this film aren’t particularly new, but in the world of horror cinema, they are as fresh as farm produce. Linguistics and semiotics make for a tricky horror film subject, and to my knowledge this is the first film I’ve seen brave enough to try and sell wordplay as a particularly horrifying movie villain. As ideas go, I admit… it’s pretty out there. It takes some time to wrap your head around it, even for those familiar with the ideas put forth. Still, it’s amusing how easily audiences are prepared to accept that our neighbors will go zombie and eat our skin, but not that words have any particular power. One horror trope gets a free pass from Logic City, while the other gets pulled over by the thought police. Go figure.

Despite the relatively small cast of unknowns (at least on the North American stage) Pontypool’s cast turn out magnificent performances. Veteran television and character actor Stephen McHattie is perfectly cast as the grizzled washed-up DJ, his baritone growling make for a near-perfect radio announcer drawl, so convincing that you’d think it was his actual profession. Lisa Houle hits a perfect balance between sardonic disbelief and terrified leading lady panic, her face dancing with confusion and emotion. The chemistry works well between McHattie and Houle, due in part no doubt to the fact that they are married and have a child together in real life. Georgina Reilly plays the wide-eyed teenager at the switchboard, giving a reserved and quirky performance that suits the tone of the film well. She wasn’t on my radar before, but she is now. Young, pretty and talented, I expect to see a lot more of her in the years to come.

As amusing an idea as having a zombie invasion from the perspective of the dude in the sound booth reporting on it, Pontypool subverts nearly every expectation. We expect violence; we get intellectual ruminations on the nature of language. We expect doors to be kicked in a la George Romero, with zombies slowly, methodically creeping in, but get eerie silences and scratches, low shuffling about outside, (almost) always out of sight. We get a hero in the form of a drunken disc jockey that saves the world—maybe—not with a chainsaw and a shotgun, or a cricket bat, but with a microphone. We even get a satisfying amount of tongue-in-cheek humor interjected along the way, just enough to lubricate the dramatic gears without making things goofy. And you’ll never look at French-Canadians the same way again.

A brilliant film from start to finish, Pontypool is an introspective David Cronenberg thriller by way of Shaun of the Dead, a psychological head-twisting gore film without any gore; a nail-biting drama with a premise so unique to cinema that seems so dumb at first, but so amazing after the credits roll. It also may be the best film that Bruce McDonald has made thus far. As a special bonus to myself, I find this movie particularly amusing because I live a few hours from Pontypool, and the idea of zombies overrunning the town is especially delicious to a sick, twisted fellow like me.

Hey, I’m not proud. But Pontypool should be.

Closing Statement
Let it never be said again that talk radio has little cultural value. If anything can break Bruce McDonald out of Canada and onto the international stage, Pontypool is the film. Innovative, thrilling, ingenious and wholly unique, this is a fabulous twist on a bloated and clichéd horror genre, a shot of cinematic adrenaline to a stale and tired subset of filmmaking overly obsessed with CGI, blood and gore.

Pontypool opens in limited release in North America on May 29th, but can be accessed through IFC On-Demand beginning May 27. See it. You won’t be sorry.

Sorry. You won’t be sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry!

The Verdict
I’m okay. I’m simple. Sorry. No, simple. I mean, simply story. The story, the… sorry. The story is sorry. I’m stable now, stable. Stable. I’m… I’m staple now.

9/10

Knowing

OPENING: 03/20/2009

STUDIO: Summit Entertainment

TRAILER: Trailer

ACCOMPLICES: Official Site

The Charge
Knowing is everything.

Opening Statement
Knowing is a film ambitious in scope and exploration, of big-screen destruction and mind-wrenching possibilities—all completely and utterly hampered by its stunted dialogue, lousy acting and pondering tone, dragging it down into the depths like a heavy weight tied to the leg of a swimmer. It is a testament to director Alex Proyas and his inherent ability to create flawed-yet-fascinating masterpieces of sci-fi horror that Knowing keeps its head afloat at all, given the oppressive odds. But it does.

Facts Of The Case
A time capsule goes into the ground fifty years ago at the groundbreaking of a brand new elementary school. In it goes a curious piece of paper, drawn feverishly by a troubled young girl named Lucinda Embry, full of numbers. No attention is paid until the capsule gets opened and the letter gets into the hands of a student at the same school, now five decades later. The boy, Caleb (Chandler Canterbury) takes the letter home, and it catches the interest of his single parent father, John Koestler (Nicholas Cage), a MIT professor and astrophysicist.

At first John dismisses the page, but catches a pattern in the numbers corresponding to the date of every major human disaster on the planet over the last fifty years. If the page is accurate, it would mean tomorrow would predict the death of 81 individuals—and sure enough, a plane falls out of the sky and kills 81 people, right in John’s backyard. Not literally, of course, but down the street.

Struggling to rationalize his scientific belief and his faith, John tries to predict where the next event will occur, but has no how he can stop them from occurring. Even more alarming, his boy Caleb is being visited by ominous apocalyptic imagery and haunting black figures who whisper directly into his head. Together with the daughter of Lucinda, Diana (Rose Byrne) the parents desperately try to unlock the secret behind the numbers, and the very fate of humanity.

The Evidence
A furious mish-mash of science fiction tropes, mathematics, philosophy, religious ideology and spiritual ruminations, Knowing is ambitious; at least as far as end-of-the-world blockbuster films are concerned. Consider what our normal Hollywood expectations are for this kind of film: asteroid/plague/pestilence/monster threatens to destroy earth, heroic band of misfits step up to battle and save the day, some east coast city gets wiped off the map, Morgan Freeman gives an inspirational speech, American flag waves slow-motion in the wind, and Aerosmith plays a triumphant song as the credits roll. Knowing is like the dark horse of the genre, refusing to abide by any of these rules, carving a path directly through the wall and into unexplored territory. The results are messy, but admirably daring.

Driven by peculiar conundrum of crashing cinematic clichés and spectacular missteps, all bound together by complex notions about life, the universe, religion and faith, science and mathematics; Knowing is as interested in blowing up the planet as it is exploring the meaning of it all, of free will versus determination. This is a tricky thing, mixing science fiction and religion in this fashion, because one side inevitably gets the short stick. And if you’re “lucky” enough to have Nicholas Cage in your film, well, you’ve got another set of problems entirely. Its flaws are many, but not enough to diminish the glorious way Knowing refuses to compromise its peculiar messages about faith and fate. I’d much rather see a movie that stays true to its convictions and goes all-in, even if in doing so it dooms the film to mediocrity, than sit through something that tries to be profound and chickens out at the end. And “chickening out” is one phrase that will never, ever be used in relation to its ending. Kudos where kudos is due: this film goes for broke, and a lot of things get broke.

Bloated and gagging on defects that would derail any other film, Knowing saunters on undeterred, refusing to allow its acting, plot holes or dialogue to derail its ultimate goal of messing with your head. I admire this kind of stubborn tenacity. What begins as a humdrum mathematical thriller rapidly descends into a Japanese-style horror flick, and then further plummets into insanity as a full-blown science fiction extravaganza. The transition between these three elements is not always smooth, but once Knowing gets its hooks into you, you’re going for a ride. Director Alex Proyas brings a commanding style of ominous shadow and direction into some truly stunning works of composition and CGI destruction. One in particular involving an unbroken shot amidst the carnage of a plane crash, is riveting. Let there be no argument about the visual style: Knowing is stunning to look at. The score, a calamitous orchestral affair tumbles and swirls, one of the most visceral and effective scores in recent memory for heightening tension and anxiety in audiences.

Where things get tricky for audiences is how Knowing juggles at least three different genres of films simultaneously (horror, action-thriller and science-fiction) and often gets jumbled up, with scenes leaping schizophrenically between apocalyptic ramblings and introspective explorations of faith. The transition from one style of filmmaking to the other creeps up inexorably, similar to director Proyas’ previous cult classic, Dark City. Just when you think you have a handle on what’s going on, creepy looking dudes in black trench coats show up and toss the rule book out the window. It can be disorienting.

As mentioned, the acting is bad. No getting around it. I struggle with the credibility of Nicholas Cage as an actor, because I’m almost positive audiences shouldn’t be breaking into laughter during his emote scenes (which they did in my screening). He may be Hollywood royalty, but he just looks befuddled on screen. Or, gods help us, constipated. The dialogue and plot show all the signs of having far too many cooks in the kitchen (no fewer than five screenplay writers are credited) leaving a perplexing jumble of sequenced events, clumsily-executed monologues and erratic character behavior. For many, these will be deal-breaking elements. Knowing pays off, but only for those who can suspend disbelief long enough to see where the film is going. Unfortunately, many will not make it this far.

One cannot escape the realization that Knowing (or something very much like it) was the movie that M. Night Shyamalan desperately wanted to make the last time around, but chickened out and made The Happening instead—a film that you will no doubt agree with us about, sucked. Like The Happening, Knowing also feels confused at times about its message and how best to articulate it to eager audiences. Imagine yourself in the position of the protagonist: if you were handed a list of every major catastrophe and knew it was inevitable, how would you go about stopping it? Would you even try? Why? Wouldn’t that just be a gigantic waste of time? For John, the struggle is personal and professional—his scientific mind rejects the notion and insists that “sh*t happens”, as he says in the film, but his faith (or lack thereof) demand his attention, suggesting that his own personal tragedies in life may have been avoided with timely intervention, had he been privy to the right information. Knowing genuinely seeks to find intellectual footing here, in exploring the dichotomy between philosophy and faith. There are profound and complex themes at work about science and religion, about destiny and free will, and while not all of them hit their mark, it is a refreshing change from the standard, mindless disaster genre.

You may notice how light this review is on salient plot points. This, gentle reader, is deliberate on our part—the less you know about Knowing going into it, the more satisfactory (or aggravating) an experience it will be for you. This is absolutely critical to appreciate its masterful descent into mathematical madness and apocalyptic horror, because if you get the end spoiled for you, you’ll think the film sounds dumb. Audiences have exactly one shot to appreciating this film, and it is going in as sight unseen as possible.

With some suspension of disbelief, Knowing offers one of the best descents into pure science fiction thrills in recent memory. It takes a while for the engine to warm up, but once it revs in the second act, the descent is a spectacular collision of high-octane special effects, stunning compositions of mayhem and disaster and top-notch thriller chases. Like a swelling crescendo of an orchestra, everything keeps intensifying: the science fiction elements keep getting more and more profound, the horror elements keep getting more unsettling, and the action elements lead to white-knuckle gripping of your seat. How satisfying you find the climax will depend entirely on your tastes, but it is an impressive ride all the same.

Closing Statement
An inherently jumbled script, laughable dialogue and wooden acting cripple Knowing at the knees, preventing the sci-fi thriller from achieving critical glory. Still, none of its flaws—not even Nicholas Cage—can diminish the sheer ambitious scope, the fantastic visual style or the large-scale catastrophic special effects, which tear up the screen in thrilling fashion. If you can forgive some stony dialogue and performances, Knowing will reward those looking for something memorable and oblique.

The Verdict
Not guilty. It may not be perfect, but I like my films to go big or go home.

7/10